The Port of Tauranga lies 75 miles south of the beautiful conch shell beaches of the Coromandel peninsula on the east coast of North Island, New Zealand. The attractive port is entered through a deep water channel into Tauranga Harbour, an extensive area of 19,900 hectares of shallow water and mudflats to the west of the modern port. Matakana Island forms a long perimeter barrier to the sea to the north of the entrance channel, and the sea has also formed a shallow inlet at the north of Matakana Island into Tauranga (pronounced ‘Tow-rang-ah’) harbour. The 761 feet high extinct volcanic cone of Mount Maunganui, known as Mauao, rises above the entrance channel on its south side, and has hot saltwater pools at its base, with the sandy strip of land next to it is known as Mount Manganui community, a suburb of Tauranga. This local community remained independent of Tauranga until the 1989 local government reforms. The Tauranga Harbour Bridge was opened in 1988 and has helped this joining together process by uniting the Mount Maunganui and Tauranga communities. The walking trails around Mauao volcanic peak provide grandstand views of the shipping entering and leaving Tauranga port.

The tourist areas of Ocean Beach, Omanu and Arataki in the eastern coastal strip of Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty have a lively waterfront area and some impressive beaches. The Bay of Plenty occupies a huge area of land between the Coromandel peninsula and the East Cape, with rich farmland famous for the growing of kiwifruits and tangelos. The Bay of Plenty is mostly Maori country as most of the first Maori to reach New Zealand arrived here in their great ‘waka’ canoes. The racial mix of the current Tauranga population of 120,000 people has only gradually changed with the influx of Europeans.

The Port of Tauranga is now the largest port in New Zealand in terms of cargo handled, and is the only natural harbour between Auckland and Wellington offering good shelter in all weather conditions. In 2014 it handled 19.74 million tonnes of cargo (13.35 million tonnes exports and 6.39 million tonnes imports), of which the greatest cargo by far was the 8.3 million tonnes of logs, wood chips, and forestry products exported to the Asia-Pacific region. Some 1.56 million tonnes of dairy products and 0.69 million tonnes of fruit particularly kiwifruit and tangelos was also exported, and oil product imports were 1.3 million tonnes and fertiliser imports were 0.5 million tonnes. Ninety cruise ships visited the port during the six month cruise season from October 2015 to April 2016, with their estimated 300,000 cruise passengers enjoying sightseeing in the Bay of Plenty or visiting the hot springs and geysers of the Taupo volcanic area of central North Island. Three cruise ships can be moored at any one time along the Mount Maunganui wharves of total length 2,055 metres, and the other principal wharves are the Tanker Terminal of length 250 metres, and the impressive new Sulphur Point Container Terminal with three berths and a length of over 770 metres. This container terminal handled 850,000 TEU of containers imported or exported, with another 140,000 TEU of containers transhipped.

History of Tauranga Harbour

When Capt. James Cook on his first voyage of exploration sailed along the coast from the East Cape of New Zealand north to the Coromandel peninsula in late October 1769 he named it the Bay of Plenty as it gave plenty of water and provisions for his crew. This was in contrast to the Bay of Poverty, his first landfall on 7th October to the south of East Cape, which had furnished no water or provisions. The Bay of Plenty has certainly lived up to its name as it is the fastest growing region in North Island and is a barometer to the health of the national economy. The Bay also has its own active volcano at White island thirty miles offshore with a continuous plume of smoke.

Tauranga means ‘sheltered anchorage’ in the Maori language, and in the 1820s settlers from the Bay of islands grew flax, potatoes and vegetables around the harbour. The missionary schooner Herald was probably the first European vessel to enter the harbour in 1828. In 1853, Capt. Drury in the frigate HMS Pandora surveyed the harbour and the coast, and twenty years later the port of Tauranga was officially established by order of the governor of New Zealand. In 1864, the tiny community of Tauranga became the scene of the Battle of gate Pa, one of the most decisive engagements of the New Zealand Maori Wars. In April of that year British troops from the nearby Monmouth redoubt surrounded a Maori Pa or fort at Tauranga, and then used naval vessels to pound it with artillery. The battle was won by British troops at a cost of one third of their number, and at nightfall the surviving Maori slipped through the British lines and melted into the many bays and creeks of Tauranga Harbour to fight again in central North Island with the Waikato King Maori group. The Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 signed by British settlers and Maori chiefs created New Zealand, but some Maori fought on after their interpretation of the Treaty as regards land ownership was different to that of the British.

A weekly passenger service began in the 1870s connecting Whakatane, Tauranga, Ohiwa and Opotiki with Auckland, which continued until the opening of a rail link between Tauranga and Hamilton in 1928. The steamer Taranaki of 415 grt was wrecked on Karewa Island off Tauranga on 29th November 1878 while on a voyage from Auckland to Tauranga. She was owned by the newly formed Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, but had been built on the Clyde in 1865 for the New Zealand Steam Navigation Company.

During her long career of 74 years, the sailing ship Lady Jocelyn of 2,138 grt made many passages to New Zealand and became the first large sailing ship to enter the harbour on 2nd January 1881 with 397 passengers, the third group for the Vesey- Stewart settlements of Katikati and Te Puke. She had been built on the Thames in 1852 by C. J. Mare & Company and was chartered to Shaw, Savill & Company in 1869 for emigrant work. She was acquired by Shaw, Savill & Albion Co. Ltd. in 1883 and fitted with refrigerated machinery, which was used after her return from her last voyage to New Zealand in 1900 as a refrigerated store on the Thames in times of national emergency during strikes until she was broken up in 1926. She was followed into Tauranga by the sailing ship May Queen on 16th December 1881 with 218 passengers, both vessels having sailed from Gravesend on voyages that took three to four months.

The first meeting of the newly established Tauranga Harbour Board, established on 26th October 1912, was convened in early 1913 to administer the affairs of the harbour. The railway wharf at Tauranga was completed in 1927 and used exclusively for coastal shipping such as the twin screw twin masted engines aft classic coaster Port Tauranga of 1,500 dwt built in 1937 by Henry Robb Ltd. for Capt. A.F. Watchlin of Auckland. She was used in the timber trades and she continued in these after her sale to the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand and her renaming as Kopua until sold to Australian owners at the end of 1959. in 1948, the steamer James Cook of 2,200 grt, built in 1921 for Harold C. Sleigh of Melbourne, arrived to load timber for Australia, and five years later the first pile was driven in for the Mount Maunganui Wharf of 372 metres in length, and the first vessel to berth in December 1954 was Korowai of 2,525 grt built on the Clyde by the Stephens yard for the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. In 1955, the Mount Maunganui branch railway, first laid in 1910, was re-laid with heavy track and reopened that year for paper pulp and timber exports in the new Union Steamship Company of New Zealand vessel Kawerau of 3,698 grt to Australia. Kawerau was a raised quarterdeck design vessel with six other sisters equipped with derricks on four masts and a set of posts that all continued in the pulp trade for the next twenty years.

The first shipment of logs was made to Japan on 24th November 1957, and New Zealand has experienced heavy demand from both Japan and Korea ever since. Heavy logs are classed as ‘J-grade’ for Japanese grade logs, and ‘K-grade’ for Korean grade logs, with various sub-grades within these groups, ranging from pulp logs to clear wood and sawn wood quality for furniture. However, big log stockpiles had built up in Korea by the 1990s, but the New Zealand Forest Ministry has since worked hard to build up the forestry products industry to one worth $2.3 billion in 2013/14 with record exports of logs. Declining volumes of 10% per year in the export of wood chips and pulp and paper have been experienced in recent years. The Port of Tauranga later purchased the log marshalling and cargo handling business of Owens Services BOP Ltd. owned by New Zealand business entrepreneur Bob Owens, with the tally count of logs and the loading of logs made at the southern end of Mount Maunganui Wharf. Log volumes exported at Tauranga were 4.4 million tonnes in 2011, 4.9 million tonnes in 2012, and 5.6 million tonnes in 2013. The wood chip export terminal was opened in august 1972, and used a conveyor system for the loading of the chips. a record cargo of 53,480 tonnes of wood chips was loaded into the wood chip carrier Hachinohe owned by the Far East Transport Co. Ltd. of Tokyo in September 1999.

H.M. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Tauranga on board the royal Yacht Britannia on 9th February 1963. In November 1965, Mount Maunganui Wharf was officially handed over to the Tauranga Harbour Board by Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Sir Keith Holyoake. The first container was unloaded from the deck of a cargo ship in 1967, and Suevic of Shaw, Savill & Albion Line loaded the first butter cargo in December 1968. The big reefer Port Caroline of 20,026 dwt and 100 TEU capacity (the biggest reefer in the world at that time) visited the port for the first time in 1972. She was owned by Port Line and had been completed along with sister Port Chalmers five years earlier by the Alexander Stephens yard on the Clyde. The Tauranga Harbour Board had two motor tugs, Rotorua and Mount Maunganui, to assist Port Caroline to her berth.

The first coal store of 8,500 tonnes capacity was opened in December 1968, and the vacuum salt refinery for Dominion Salt was commissioned in 1972/73 with the first cargo of bulk salt discharged from the bulker Temple arch, managed by Lambert Brothers, on 13th May 1973. The Tanker Terminal was opened in 1980 for the import of oil products, chemicals, and edible oils for five oil companies. An oil pipeline of length 1.5 kilometres connects the terminal to the six distribution tanks of gulf New Zealand, which opened its distribution centre in 1999. Tauranga receives its oil product cargoes from Marsden Point at Whangarei in coastal chartered tankers.

A new linkspan and Ro-Ro service to Australia was opened on 19th March 1975 by Ro-Ro Marama of 4,510 grt completed in 1969 by the Robb Caledon yard at Dundee for the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. This company replaced Marama in late 1976 and summer 1977 with two gas turbine electric powered larger Ro-Ros, Union Rotorua and Union Rotoiti, both of 20,271 dwt. The first heavy lift multi-purpose gantry crane became operational in the port in 1979 for loading and unloading of containers, and marked the start of three decades of continuous expansion for the port. New Zealand Steel announced in 1985 their decision to use Tauranga for imports and exports of steel.

Sulphur Point Container Terminal

Port of Tauranga Ltd. was established in 1985 with over five million tonnes of cargo handled in the year 1990. The Sulphur Point Container Terminal of 600 metres in length and 47 hectares in area was opened two years later at a cost of $100 million. Land reclamation had started in 1965 and some ninety hectares of land had been reclaimed by July 1989 when construction of the wharves began. On 4th April 2013 a $30 million extension was opened at its northern end to extend its length by 170 metres to 770 metres, with a further 25 hectares of land available for expansion. The extension was opened by Prime Minister John Key with the terminal now operating seven gantry cranes, three of which are ‘Super Post Panamax’ capacity, and 36 straddle carriers. The ground slot capacity was increased by 30% and the refrigerated container outlets by 60%.

A new rail siding was constructed and the existing one reconfigured to allow four trains to be loaded or unloaded at the same time. The number of trains between the container terminal and the inland port of MetroPort in Auckland, established in 1999 at Southdown in Auckland as part of Port of Tauranga multi-port strategy, was increased to five per day (or 530 TEU) each way. The central part of Tauranga town community is located to the south of Sulphur Point Container Terminal, with rail access to this terminal via a separate rail bridge across Waipu Bay and then through Tauranga town.

Recent Developments

An important 50/50 joint venture with Northland Port Cargo (NZ) Ltd. was entered into during Millennium year to develop the $65 million deep water Northport forestry products terminal close to the existing Marsden Point oil terminal at Whangarei at the northern end of North Island. Northport forestry products terminal became operational in April 2002, and bulk carriers such as Eredine of 39,100 dwt completed in 2014 for Swire Shipping often load a part cargo of logs at Tauranga and then top up their cargo at Northport.

Record exports of over 450,000 tonnes of grain and palm kernel were achieved in 2008, with ABB grain signing a 35 year lease of land at the Port of Tauranga and constructing a bulk facility of over nine thousand square metres in area, the export maize terminal having been opened in May 1976. Dredging of the Tauranga harbour to deepen and widen the shipping channel has recently cost $40-$50 million with the largest vessel now allowed to enter being 347 metres in length and 14.5 metres in draft, equivalent to a container ship of 6,000 TEU capacity. The latter capacity will be increased to 8,500 TEU in the next ten years by more dredging, and will also allow deeper draft bulk carriers and longer cruise ships to call. The port now has fifteen berths with twelve at the Mount Maunganui Wharf and three at the Sulphur Point Container Terminal. There are two cold stores in the port for a total capacity of 29,000 tonnes, the reefer Knud Lauritzen having arrived on 1st June 2005 to load a record cargo of nine thousand pallets of golden kiwifruit. The first pallet loaded cargo of kiwifruit had been shipped to Japan on the P. & o. reefer Wild Flamingo of 9,750 dwt in July 1982, and the Lauritzen reefer Argentinean reefer had loaded 17,139 tonnes of kiwifruit on 12th May 1991.

The Port of Tauranga won the joint award for the Australasian Port of the Year from Lloyd’s List in 2004, the first time a New Zealand port has won this award, and is now listed on the NZX Stock Exchange as one of the fifty largest companies in New Zealand. A dairy export terminal was opened in September 2001, and during 2008 a bulk liquids terminal for Marstel Terminals was commissioned at a cost of fifteen million New Zealand dollars.

Container Ship Calls

ANZDL (Australia New Zealand Direct Line), P.&.O. Nedlloyd Line, New Zealand Pacific Container Line, and FESCo New Zealand Express Line were some of the first dedicated container ship lines to use Sulphur Point Container Terminal in the 1990s. Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) began to use the terminal on 5th February 2003, and the NZX consortium of NYK, MOL, PIL, MISC Berhad and OOCL began to operate from Tauranga in March 2006. Maersk Line also began to call in February 2006 on its ‘Pendulum’ service to North America and Europe, including Trans- Tasman imports via Tauranga. The Hamburg-Sud new fortnightly ‘Trident’ service to the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.A. and Europe began in March 2007, and the third largest container line in the world, CMA-CGM of France, began to call in 2008. OOCL of Hong Kong have a series of container ships of around 4,500 TEU to 5,000 TEU, with OOCL New Zealand making her maiden call at Tauranga in April 2010. The list of the biggest container lines now calling at the Port of Tauranga in order of calls per year is now given :-

Cruise Ship Calls

The much loved cruise liner Kungsholm became the first large cruise ship to visit the port on 2nd February 1968. Queen Elizabeth 2 of Cunard Line visited the port in February 2004 and became its largest cruise ship to date. The Port of Tauranga was visited during the six month cruise season of 2007/08 by 33 cruise ships, rising to 84 cruise ship visits during 2012/13, and currently the total is around ninety cruise ship calls per year. Passengers enjoy sightseeing in the Bay of Plenty area or are taken by coach to see the hot volcanic springs and natural wonders of Rotorua, Taupo and Waikato. The cruise industry is worth 33 million NZ dollars per year to the Bay of Plenty economy, and supports around 580 jobs. The most frequent cruise ship line calling during 2015/16 season is Princess Cruises as their vessels are based in Australian ports for the whole season. The most frequent calls are made by :-

Rena Container Ship Disaster

The Greek Costamare owned container ship Rena grounded on the astrolabe reef in the Bay of Plenty twenty kilometres north east of Mount Maunganui on 5th October 2011. She had been completed in 1990 as Zim America of 3,351 TEU capacity, 38,788 gt and 47,231 dwt on dimensions of length 774 feet, beam of 106 feet and loaded draft of 39 feet. She had a crew of twenty, and a service speed of 21 knots from an eight cylinder two stroke Sulzer diesel engine of 29,497 bhp and burning ninety tonnes of heavy fuel oil per day. She was on a voyage from Napier to Tauranga with 1,750 containers on board, together with 1,700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil and two hundred tonnes of marine diesel.

An oil slick over three miles in length threatened the local wildlife and fishing grounds four days later, and on the following day oil began washing ashore on the beach of beautiful Mount Maunganui. The movement of the ship caused further damage to her with 350 tonnes of heavy fuel oil leaking out per day. The New Zealand Environment Minister declared the oil spill on 11th October to be the worst ever maritime environmental disaster. Rena split into two sections on 8th January 2012 with the bow section firmly grounded on the reef and the stern section had slewed away and settled lower in the water, and disappeared from sight on 4th April 2012. Some 77% of her containers have since been salvaged and placed in an area at Shed 22 in the Port of Tauranga for removal of their contents, and all heavy fuel oil and marine diesel removed. The entire bow section has been levelled to one metre below the low tide mark, and the 350 tonne accommodation block and most of the port side of the hull to give a total of 670 tonnes of steel removed. Rescue crews had tried to save the local beaches and birds from the leaking fuel oil with some success, but the surf and rough seas on the reef quickly broke up the fuel tanks of this container ship with consequent huge pollution. The Greek Costamare owner was fined NZ$300,000 by the Tauranga District Council for the oil spill, and the Master and Second officer imprisoned for seven months and then deported on release.

Swire Shipping

Swire Shipping make 120 calls per year at Tauranga to load export cargoes of pulp, paper, timber, steel and containers. Swire Shipping is one of the biggest customers of the port, and named the fourth of eight multipurpose ‘S’ class vessels of 31,000 dwt at the port as Shengking at a ceremony in December 2013. Swire Shipping has been trading to New Zealand since 1883 with the first cargo being 1,200 tonnes of tea, and named one of their multi-purpose vessels on the Chief Container Service from South East Asia as Tauranga Chief of 21,300 dwt in 1999. The company began a New Zealand to Middle East service in 2009 with calls at Tauranga, Timaru and Nelson to Jebel Ali (Dubai), Damman (Saudi Arabia) and Shuwaikh (Kuwait).

In March 2015, Swire Bulk Logistics entered into a long term partnership with golden Bay Cement, the largest NZ manufacturer, to build, own and operate a self discharging cement carrier. Aotearoa Chief of 9,000 dwt will be completed at the end of 2016 by the Jinling yard in China and will carry cement from the loading port of Portland to golden Bay Cement distribution centres in Tauranga, Auckland, Napier, New Plymouth, Picton and Wellington.

General Cargo

Log exports from Tauranga doubled during the years between 2009 and 2014 to six million tonnes per year, with 59% going to China, 17% to Korea, 12% to Japan, 10% to India and the remainder to Australia. The open log marshalling and storage areas have been increased to effectively create four loading berths for over one hundred bulkers per year. An export target of eight million tonnes per year by 2018 is realistic, with bulkers of Pacific Basin Shipping and those of other big Pacific trading fleets the most regular customers.

A heavy lift cargo was handled at the port in November 2014 for the Netherlands via the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on the Seatrade reefer Italia Reefer. It consisted of two yacht masts of ninety metres in height, two yacht booms of 23 metres in length, all of their rigging plus other equipment for a 95 metre super yacht being constructed in the Netherlands. Aotearoa, the New Zealand challenger for the America’s Cup in 2013 was also loaded onto a container ship at Tauranga for the sailing competitive series of races in San Francisco, however Aotearoa lost by one race to the American challenger.

The first shipment of golden kiwifruit of the 2014 season left Tauranga on the vessel Lapponian Reefer for Japan on 31st March. Some four thousand hectares of farmland in the Bay of Plenty area are given over to the production of golden kiwifruit, earning over one billion NZ dollars per year in exports. Zespri International Ltd. has been the main shipper of kiwifruit from Tauranga over the last twenty years. The cargo is loaded as a lift of eight pallets at a time, and export earnings have doubled over the past decade to around two billion NZ dollars per year.

An unusual cargo of eight retired Skyhawk fighter jets was loaded onto a Maersk Line container ship in December 2012 for shipment to the U.S.A. The planes were dismantled into manageable pieces and strapped onto the base of a forty feet long metal cradle to slot into the holds of the container vessel.

Sofrana Unilines (NZ) Ltd. have served the South Pacific region for forty years and are frequent callers at Tauranga as a key link in their network. The fleet cargoes include lime for Papua New Guinea mines, newsprint, steel, timber, dry and reefer containers, breakbulk and project cargoes e.g. yachts. The fleet of eight multi-purpose feeder container ships are in the range from 6,000 dwt to 18,870 dwt and 500 TEU to 1,080 TEU capacity, and are named Sofrana Tourville, Sofrana Surville, Southern Fleur, Southern Pearl, Forum Fiji, Capitaine Tasman, Southern Lily II, and MCP Villach.

Reef Shipping Ltd. of Auckland had also served the South Pacific region for forty years but were taken over on 26th December 2012 by Matson Inc. of San Francisco, and were renamed as Matson South Pacific Ltd. and registered in New Zealand. They have services from Auckland, Tauranga, Brisbane and Suva (Fiji) to Nauru, Solomon Islands, Tahiti, Samoa, American Samoa, Cook Islands including Rakahanga and Rarotonga, Niue, Tonga, Wallis and Fortuna, Vanuatu, Tarawa, Tokelau, Tuvalu and Majuro. The four ship fleet with names such as Reef Nauru, Reef Samoa and Reef Tahiti were renamed with the Matson names such as Liloa, Mana and Imua.

Neptune Shipping Line (NSL) was established in 1997 to provide liner and bulk shipping services in the trades between Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. Roll Global LLC with assets in Fiji including Fiji container parks in Suva and Lautoka as well as wholly owning Fiji Water acquired NSL in December 2007 and commenced trading as Neptune Pacific Line Pte (NPL). NPL provides liner services between Fiji, Auckland, Tauranga and Australian ports as well as to Noumea, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Nauru and the Micronesian islands. Capitaine Cook of 12,357 dwt with three deck cranes of forty tonnes capacity to serve her four holds was one of the first ships of the NPL fleet. The current fleet is Capitaine Tasman, Capitaine Wallis, Danny Rose and Scarlett Lucy equipped with twin cranes of up to 45 tonnes capacity and in the range from 225 TEU to 907 TEU capacity.

Pacifica Shipping Ltd. was formed in 1985 as a one ship service on the Lyttelton to Wellington route of New Zealand coastal shipping. It currently operates two dedicated feeder container ships on the coast, and offers both wharf to wharf and door to door transport solutions. Spirit of Independence built in 2005 and Spirit of Endurance built in 2008 are of 680 TEU capacity with one hundred reefer plugs and good service speeds of seventeen knots.

The big increase in calls by general cargo ships, feeder and deep sea container ships, cruise ships and tankers calling at the port has led to the renewal of two of the three tugs owned by the Port of Tauranga. The tugs Kaimai built in 1976 and Te Matua built in 1993 have been replaced by two new tugs ordered from the Cheoy Lee yard in Hong Kong, while the third tug Sir Robert of 338 grt and 4,462 bhp and completed in November 2000 by Northport Engineering Ltd. at Whangarei has been refitted. The new tractor tugs are of 74 tonnes bollard pull, 24 metres in length and powered by twin Caterpillar diesels operating Rolls Royce thrusters and came into service during 2015.

Postscript

The Port of Tauranga is located at 37.39 degrees south, 176.10 degrees east and has its Port Administration Building, tug quay, pilot quay and boat ramp at the northern end of the Mount Maunganui Wharf general cargo berths. The port employs around 165 permanent staff and twenty casual workers drawn from the Tauranga and Mount Maunganui communities. Tauranga Airport is on the east side of Waipu Bay 1.6 kilometres to the south of the southern part of the Mount Maunganui Wharf.

Tauranga has a very beautiful harbour and port, with a temperate climate and summer temperatures higher than those of the U.K. Kiwi Coast Cruises offer five cruises per day between central Tauranga and Salisbury Wharf on the north part of Mount Maunganui Wharf over the Christmas period until the end of January, and over Easter and also when there are cruise ships in port. The Port of Tauranga is well placed for future expansion with record figures of imported and exported cargo set each year, as well as having links to the port of Timaru between Christchurch and Dunedin on South Island, and Northport at Marsden Point on North Island. Several container trains per day run in each direction from Tauranga to MetroPort at Southdown in Auckland for distribution by rail and road. Provisional figures for 2015 cargo totals show that the Port of Tauranga will have shipped twenty million tonnes of cargo imported or exported, and one million TEU of containers imported, exported or transhipped.